Last July, “The Onion” posted a hilarious news story titled “‘I’m A Trump-Era Conservative,’ Says Horrifying Man 25 Years From Now.”
With anti-Trump U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) abruptly announcing his retirement, satire has now converged with reality. There is no longer a conservative, or even Never Trump wing of the Republican Party — there is only President Donald Trump, his true believers and Republican officeholders jockeying to sound like him.
Consider what that means:
The Republican Party was originally founded in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854. Its founders were abolitionists, virulently opposed to the South’s so-called “peculiar institution.” Its first president issued the Emancipation Proclamation and pushed for the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Today, in 2017, a Republican Virginia gubernatorial candidate runs ads openly promising to maintain Confederate statues and the current president endorses him, proclaiming that he’ll protect the state’s “heritage.”
Another election this year has strongly positioned former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore to enter the United States Senate. For a party that champions “constitutional conservatism,” it’s curious to note that Mr. Moore was twice ousted from his judgeship by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary, which determined that his defiance of federal court orders was unacceptable. Moore’s greatest hits include claims that Muslims should be barred from serving in Congress (contradicting the Religious Test Clause) and that the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, legalizing gay marriage, is worse than Dred Scott.
The Anti-Defamation League recently criticized influential right-wing bloggers Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec for their extreme views. Cernovich, in particular, claims date rape doesn’t exist and that Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of a Washington, D.C.-area pizzeria. After the ADL released their report, Ohio Treasurer and 2018 Senate candidate Josh Mandel criticized the group, writing that “he stands” with the provocateurs.
Those of us who have long opposed the Republican Party and its principles have argued against what we perceive as damaging political positions. Waging unnecessary wars, eviscerating the social safety net, gutting voting rights — all are distinct forms of damaging public policy.
Many of us even characterized Republican Party figureheads as extreme — in retrospect, incorrectly. Mitt Romney and U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, now revered as anti-Trump figures by the left, were wrongly caricatured as extremists who’d put America’s existence into question. Former president George Bush, as awful a president as he was, never ended up using nuclear weapons or imposed anything close to a theocracy, as some of his critics charged at the time. Racial dog whistles certainly existed in modern Republican politics, but even President George H.W. Bush condemned David Duke’s 1991 candidacy for governor of Louisiana.
Republicans were wrong but, to quote a conservative in his endorsement of Hillary Clinton last year, they were wrong within normal parameters. For decades, the ideological fringe seeped into the Republican brand — but now it has fully taken over the party.
Other columnists for the Herald have expounded on the rise of populism internationally, arguing that its resurgence allows the people to have a voice. Domestically, populism has never had such a grip on politics or media in our contemporary history.
To those who cheer the rise of Trumpism, and its eclipse of everything the Republican Party purports to stand for, remember this — populism brings with it economic ruin (think Kirchner in Argentina), mainstream bigotry (Corbyn in the United Kingdom or Le Pen in France) and the erosion of rule of law and constitutional norms (Duterte in the Philippines). Political corruption accompanies it in droves, by the way — as Bob Mueller will continue to prove in the coming months.
As of now, the Democrats don’t face this problem in as dire a scope as the Republicans. The U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vermont wing of my party has its own shortcomings, including unrealistic economic policy ideas and an unsophisticated understanding of foreign affairs. These issues, however, pale in comparison to Senator-in-waiting Roy Moore and what he means for the Republican Party going forward.
In a liberal democracy, having a reasonable opposition that might win more often is better than facing an unreasonable opposition that might win only occasionally. With the stakes as high as the future of our planet, both Democrats and decent Republicans must hold out hope that today’s GOP will come to its senses and shed Trumpian populism.
Zach Urisman ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in finance.
